Has Andrea Dworkin died?

[Modem Butterfly]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Andrea_Dworkin

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Date: 2005/04/10 Sun AM 01:21:00 GMT

To: [email protected]

Subject: Terrible news

or move to

I am devestated to have to tell everyone that Andrea Dworkin died this morning. Her work changed so many women's lives and her courage to speak against patriarchy defined the radical feminist movement. What an awful loss.

Gail Dines

Gail Dines Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies

Chair of American Studies Department

Wheelock College

35 Pilgrim Road

Boston MA 02215

Tel: [phone]

second post:

Date: 2005/04/10 Sun PM 02:37:02 GMT

To: [email protected]

Subject: Some more details about Andrea's death

or move to

Dear list members,

I have received many emails from list members expressing their profound sadness about Andrea’s death. They have also requested information so here is what I have. Andrea had not been in good health for a long time but there was no immediate crisis from what I can gather. I spoke to her last month about arranging for her to come to a conference and health was not preventing her from travelling. However, due to a number of disabilities, travelling did present challenges. It seems that she did not feel too well on Friday night but did not go to the hospital. On Saturday morning, John Stoltenberg found her but it was too late for medical attention. Many have asked me if there is anything they can do or a place to post thoughts about Andrea’s life. At the moment, her close friends are too stunned to think about a memorial service but there is talk of organizing one in the future. The people who knew her best recommend giving money in her name to the rape crisis center or battere! d women’s shelter of you choice. There are also plans to set up a web site for us to post messages about her. I will keep you informed. I knew Andrea personally for fifteen years but I really knew her my entire adult life as her work framed my politics. I spoke to many women yesterday and we have no words to express how we feel. There is a real desire to come together to mourn her collectively so my sense is that there will be an event in the near future. As soon as I know anything more, I will post it to the list.

Gail

Gail Dines Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies

Chair of American Studies Department

Wheelock College

35 Pilgrim Road

Boston MA 02215

Tel: [phone]

[progmom]

1. Wikipedia seems to think so

Andrea Dworkin (26 September 1946 – 9 April 2005)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin

[Book Lover]

2. I find no info/// corrected: Guardian UK has a story

other than Wikipedia's page, that has anything about her being dead. Are you a regular on the listserv? Can anyone there give another source?


on edit:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1457224,00.html


The American feminist icon, writer and campaigner Andrea Dworkin, who linked pornography to rape and violence, died at the weekend, her agent said today. She was 59 years old.

<snip>

The drive of Ms Dworkin's writing and activism was to break the silence around violence against women but her wider career saw her become a figure of adulation and loathing in equal measure. To opponents she was an archetypal man-hater, killjoy and proponent of censorship, but supporters rallied to her impassioned lectures and books. Gloria Steinem, a fellow feminist, said she was one of a handful of writers each century "who help the human race to evolve".

Ms Dworkin's life as a political activist began early. In 1965, when she was 18, she was arrested at the US mission to the United Nations, protesting against the Vietnam war. She was sent to the New York City Women's House of Detention, where she was given a brutal internal examination.

<snip>

Ms Dworkin's agent, Elaine Markson, said the cause of death was not known but she had become increasingly frail as her knees had weakened and she suffered a series of falls. She died at the home in Washington DC she shared with John Stoltenberg, her partner of 30 years and husband since 1998.

[Modem Butterfly]

5. I found it through Wikikpedia

I had lunch at my desk and was searching for something else. I noticed the dates when I meant to close the window. I found the discussion page I linked to in my post.

I did call the woman's office. She exists. There's a number for media contacts. But I did not speak to the woman.

[Solly Mack]

3. News link

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1457224,00.html

[HamdenRice]

4. Confirmed by Guardian

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1457224,00.html

Feminist icon Andrea Dworkin dies

Simon Jeffery
Monday April 11, 2005

The American feminist icon, writer and campaigner Andrea Dworkin, who linked pornography to rape and violence, died at the weekend, her agent said today. She was 59 years old.
Her radical-feminist critique of pornography began with her first book, Woman Hating, published when she was 27. She campaigned frequently on the subject, helping to draft a law in 1983 that defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. This is bizarre

Nothing from the New York Times, AP, or Reuters. But it is on Yahoo News, quoting the Guardian.

The New York Times is usually pretty quick to catch obituaries, even if they're of people the Establishment doesn't approve of.

Strange.

[Dogmudgeon]

6. Yes

The story is just breaking.

Here's a link:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1457224,00.html

The Guardian UK. So much for the American news media.

--p!

[shockra]

11. Not a peep from our MSM.

They don't want to remind people that feminism even exists.

I read most of her books, and I'm sad to hear this. She had important things to say and didn't pull punches.

[benburch]

7. I'm sorry she is dead...

But not sorry that she is gone.

[Modem Butterfly]

8. My sentiments exactly

I hope she went easy.

[Book Lover]

14. Oh sh*t! But true

She *did* do some good, but it was accidental, I think.

[mongo]

9. Ding, Dong the witch is dead....

Sorry, no sympathies here for a woman who described ALL penetrative sex as "rape", and worked so hard for censorship in America and Canada.

[Modem Butterfly]

10. Shouldn't we afford her the same courtesy as we did the Pope?

She is a public figure, important to many whether beloved or not. And not all the different in some ways.

[Minstrel Boy]

17. I think you're right.

With few and notable exceptions, I think deaths ought be observed with respect. Or if that's too much to ask, then silence.

It's not so much about the dignity of the deceased, but I think to do less can disgrace the living.

[mongo]

18. I can't put her in the same catagory as the pope

she is more in line with Santorum or Brownback or Falwell.

[Dogmudgeon]

13. Are you sure this is Dworkin?

I know that some feminists like Robin Morgan held this view, but not Andrea Dworkin. Granted, she was an in-your-face feminist, but I thought her emphasis was more on making stronger women than crippling men.

--p!

[Solly Mack]

15. Here's snopes take on it

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinno.htm

[warrens]

30. In her own words, from "Intercourse"

This may be because intercourse itself is immune to reform. In it, female is bottom, stigmatized. Intercourse remains a means or the means of physiologically making a woman inferior: communicating to her cell by cell her own inferior status, impressing it on her, burning it into her by shoving it into her, over and over, pushing and thrusting until she gives up and gives in— which is called surrender in the male lexicon. In the experience of intercourse, she loses the capacity for integrity because her body—the basis of privacy and freedom in the material world for all human beings—is entered and occupied; the boundaries of her physical body are—neutrally speaking— violated. What is taken from her in that act is not recoverable, and she spends her life—wanting, after all, to have something—pretending that pleasure is in being reduced through intercourse to insignificance.

[Solly Mack]

32. Yes, I've read Dworkin

I still have her book, "Letters from a War Zone". My husband stumbled upon it and read it shortly after we were married...he began to give me funny looks while he was reading it. LOL

I kept asking "Wanna talk about it?"

He just kept staring at me... lololol

I don't mind dialogue that pushes the envelope...it can lead to good things.(sometimes) lol

[shockra]

16. That quote has been attached to various feminists...

To undermine their credibility. I had no doubt that it was going to turn up in this thread.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinno.htm

I've never read it in any of Morgan's books either.

[swag]

19. "Penetrative intercourse is, by it's nature, violent,"

is still a remarkably dubious thing to say.

But whatever.

[mongo]

22. Here's some actual quotes

And even if she did not say those words, exactly (which I thought she had), the intent is cetainly there.

A commitment to sexual equality with males is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.
Andrea Dworkin

Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer.
Andrea Dworkin

Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.
Andrea Dworkin

Only when manhood is dead - and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it - only then will we know what it is to be free.
Andrea Dworkin

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/andrea_dworkin.html

I would dig up some more stuff - but it is finally a short day for me and I better get some actual work done. From what I recall, she is responsible for the "hate crimes" laws in Canada, and got a local ordinace that outlawed pornography in Indiana I think - that was later overturned by the supreme court.

[sandnsea]

25. This really bothers you?

Women are still abducted and raped as tools of war in other countries. Those societies also own their women in marriage. All because of their cultural concept of manhood. Why is it so threatening for a woman to discuss patriarchy, historically, and the need for society to consistently fight it? Make no mistake, if women don't face and fight for their own equality, men are not going to become enlightened on their own and proclaim equality and act on it.

[Modem Butterfly]

28. In fairness, Dworkin viewed most gender relations as adversarial

Dworkin often saved her greatest vitriol for the west, and was often very hard on women who were pro-sex. At one point she denied the idea that women could be willing participants in sex work, based on her adversarial view of gender. She softened on that point later, but the idea became a touchstone to the extreme right.

[MadHound]

20. Yeah, and then she teamed up with Jerry Falwell

And lost all of her credibility.

Sorry, I can't grieve over this one either. Dworkin had major promise within the women's movement, and could have done great things. Instead she squandored it by teaming with Falwell and promoting incest and beastiality.

She did some good, but in the end, I think she was just too far out there to do any lasting good.

[shockra]

35. What on earth are you talking about?

Falwell and Dworkin were never a team. The only thing they have in common was that they both sued Hustler magazine -- at separate times, over separate incidents. Dworkin in 1986 for a cartoon they published about her. Falwell in 1987 over a cartoon they published about him. As John Dean (of Watergate fame) wrote at FindLaw.com:

Hustler v. Falwell arose when the Reverend Jerry Falwell sued Larry Flynt and Hustler magazine over Hustler's parody of the Campari Liqueur advertisement series, in which celebrities gave interviews about their "first time." Hustler used Falwell as the featured celebrity; in his alleged "interview," Falwell states that his "first time" was during a drunken incestuous rendezvous with his mother in an outhouse.

A jury awarded Farwell hefty damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The Supreme Court, however, reversed in a 7-2 ruling, finding that the offending parody did not meet the "actual malice" standard. The Court held that outrageous parody alone, without true statements of fact, was protected by the First Amendment.

http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/dean/20010803.html

On the supposed Falwell/Dworkin connection:

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/other/ordinance/newday/QNA2.htm

Q: Okay, we try to dismiss pornography by saying it's a symptom, not a cause, and we fight for pay equity even though low pay is a symptom. What other evidence is there of a double standard?

A: In opposing pornography, feminists have been accused of being essentially right-wing, or giving aid and comfort to the political Right, or being in an alliance with the Right. These charges were made long before the existence of the Ordinance. They were made as soon as feminists began to speak out about the woman hating in pornography and as soon as feminists began to organize pickets and demonstrations to protest the production and distribution of pornography. In 1970, feminists committed civil disobedience by sitting in at the offices of Grove Press to protest the publication of pornography there and the way Grove treated its women employees. The super-radical-leftist publisher/owner of Grove Press not only had the feminists arrested by the then very brutal New York City Police Department for criminal trespass on his private property-he also accused them of working for the C.I.A. You can't get a bigger charge of collusion than that one; who cares that the man who made it was defending his profits, his pornography, his mistreatment of women workers (a/k/a "workers")? Certainly, the Left saw him as a radical, not as a capitalist. The Left continues to see pornographers as radicals, not as capitalists. With the emergence of Jerry Falwell on the national scene, feminists who opposed pornography were likened to Mr. Falwell. Feminist leaders were characterized as demagogues and puritanical opportunists in ongoing campaigns of character assassination. Mr. Falwell came to represent all that the Left detested in religion and politics and feminists who opposed pornography were robbed of their own political identities and convictions and caricatured as having his. Since Mr. Falwell had supported segregation in the 1960's, had supported the Viet Nam War, currently does support the regime in South Africa and the militarism of Cold War anticommunism, opposes abortion rights and gay rights, and since the feminist leaders of the antipornography movement hold opposite views on each and every issue, this was an extraordinary slander. But it was repeated as fact in mainstream newspaper articles and in the feminist press.

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/other/ordinance/newday/QNA2.htm

[MadHound]

39. Exscuse me, I wasn't clear

Dworkin wasn't officially partners with Falwell, however they both started their censorship crusade at the same time, and even appeared on news shows, etc. coming at the censorship debate from two different angles, yet upholding each other's arguements. It was very much a case of "politics makes strange bedfellows". I also remember both being involved in the fight over the Indianapolis law, the one later struck down on Constitutional grounds. And again, Dworkin was found to be piling on when Falwell went after Hustler.

Not an official team, but both in the anti-porn movement and not shy about working with each other for what they considered the greater good.

[redqueen]

41. Not shy about working with each other?

How?

[MadHound]

43. For instance,

They both worked on bringing about the unconstitutional law in Indianapolis that held pornagraphers liable for harm done to women. Both appeared on news shows together, spreading the joint message of censorship. Both pushed for, and praised the Meese Commission findings and censorship actions, including the push for putting such a RW fundie as Dobson on the commission.

While it wasn't anything official, it was very much a case of two radically different people and agendas making common cause on this one issue. I found it to be very much a compromise of Dworkin's work to even appear with Falwell on this issue. It gave too much fodder to the RW fundies.

[redqueen]

44. Fair enough...

I'm trying to avoid the hyperbole and I trust you. If they appeared on talk shows together, that is pretty bad... however I still have to recognize the good she did as well as the bad.

[donsu]

21. you are wrong about what she "described"

she did tremendous work for women. she spoke truth to power. many men hated her for it.

many young women today haven't a clue how close we are to the cliff's edge.

like the sugar barons want Cuba back into their control, men want women back into being their 'property' and thus their control.

today's teenager hasn't a clue how close she is to that cliff edge, not a clue..........

farewell Andrea

[mongo]

27. Not an exact quote -- but close enough

But here's a quote from the horse's mouth as it were:

Intercourse with men as we know them is increasingly impossible. It requires an abortion of creativity and strength, a refusal of responsibility and freedom: a bitter personal death. It means acting out the female role, incorporating the masochism, self-hatred, and passivity which are central to it. Unambiguous conventional heterosexual behavior is the worst betrayal of our
common humanity (Dworkin 1974, p.184).

From "Quotations from Women," Women's History,(7 January 2001)
http://womenshistory.about.com/homework/womenshistory/library/qu/blqudwor.htm

How is "any hetrosexual sex threatens females" any different from the Talibornagain cry of "homosexual marriage threatens my family"?

[donsu]

29. it's way different - it's apples and sea shells

read more feminist philosophy to understand the context of the quote you posted.

maybe you have to be a woman to understand?

[GreenArrow]

31. reading it as a human being

it strikes one as narrow, jejune and bitter; hers is not a philosophy that sees life as something essentially celebratory.

[mongo]

33. maybe you have to be a woman to understand?

Jeesh - can't quite do that, but I will say that there are plenty of women who also feel that she was a radical who did more to harm the feminist movement than help it.

[amazona]

34. i am a woman -- and mongo is right

I'll say no more since the woman has just passed but she was not a hero.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[NYCGirl]

36. I'm also a woman, a feminist, and I agree 100% with Mongo. NT

[Taverner]

45. I agree 100%

And people like Dworkin have sullied feminism's image by making it look like extremism.

[redqueen]

40. "how close we are to the cliff's edge"

Indeed... could this be why the news of her death is so notably absent from the MSM?

[NYCGirl]

24. I agree. I won't be doing any mourning for Dworkin. NT

[swag]

23. I hope she heard about the arm-grown penis before she died

[mitchum]

26. Of course...since the Grim Reaper is a male

[swag]

37. Susie Bright's blog entry on Dworkin (thanks bb.ogre)

Bright's blog entry is quite a ride. You can tell that she's pretty emotionally affected and conflicted. Worth a read.

http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2005/04/andrea_dworkin_.html

. . .

Here’s the irony... every single woman who pioneered the sexual revolution, every erotic-feminist-bad-girl-and-proud-of-it-stiletto-shitkicker, was once a freakin’ crazed fan of Andrea Dworkin. We all were. She was the one who got us looking at porn with a critical eye, she made you feel like you could just stomp into the adult bookstore and seize everything for inspection and a bonfire.

The funny thing that happened on the way to the X-Rated Sex Palace was that some of us came to different conclusions that Miss Dworkin. We saw the sexism of the porn business... but we also saw some intriguing possibilities and amazing maverick spirit. We said, “What if we made something that reflected our politics and values, but was just as sexually bold?”

Well, Andrea did not like this one little bit. Honestly, when I started On Our Backs and Herotica , I thought all the girls were going to jump on the bandwagon. I had no idea how bad the animosity would get. I mean, I have tape recordings from colleges where I would go listen to Andrea lecture in rapt attention and turn my little cassette over to capture every word. I never dreamed that i would one day become one of the people she vilified.

I wondered if she had any close girlfriends or women she considered her intellectual peers. The people she admired most in life were her father, her brother, and partner John Stoltenberg. She was a scholar of great men, and the one she studied the most, the Marquis de Sade, was someone she could quote up one side and down the other. I'm the one who said she was his feminist reincarnation. She rewrote his Juliette when she wrote her novel Ice and Fire. So much for man-hating.

. . . much more

[donsu]

47. I've read On Our Backs and Herotica

along with the other publications and books of that time. I read anything about feminism I could get my hands on.

all that writing should be brought back and made available in one spot on the net, for young women to read and know the facts of women's herstory. (or is there one already?)

and hey! its nice to meet the originator of OOB and H.

[redqueen]

38. What a polarizing figure...

I disagree with much of what she said. I think we might just want to take the good with the bad, instead of throwing people away like garbage because we don't agree with them 100%.

It's far too easy to tear people down... far too easy.

Maybe it's just that society as a whole is becoming more callous... less charitable. I don't know... but I know I find it troubling in the extreme.

[Jesus Saves]

46. Everyone has to agree with everything we believe

all the time...or else the world will explode.

[Nikia]

42. Although her feminism is more extreme than mine

And perhaps she did come across as a man hater, these ideas have merit and need to be talked about. When taken at face value and applied to every case, these ideas are extreme. Aren't these ideas valid issues though? Is sex often used as a weapon against women by men? Does the sexual objectivication of women inhrently cause inequality? Has marriage and other sexual relationships in the past and sometimes present been used to control and demean women? These things need to be talked about. Before, we primarily heard the voices of patriarchy. The nice women weren't being heard. It took the views, opposite of male chauvanism, being raised for these issues to be adequately be discussed. Yes, her views were sexist against males, but we women have been putting up with thousands of years of views which are sexist against women. Most people are not extremists and take a more moderate rational approach between two extremes. It one side isn't being heard though, there is no arriving at more moderate rational conclusions.